US Open 2012 (R5 Live) | iPlayer
Hillsborough report (R5 Live) | iPlayer
Walter Kershaw: The UK's First Street Artist? (R4) | iPlayer
David Frost's Hollywood Greats (R2) | iPlayer
The older I get, the more I enjoy sport. Not the actual high-kicking in a slimy bikini, necking Disgusto-NRG-Kola side of sport, though it's OK on special occasions, like parents' evening. No, I'm more enamoured of wrapped-in-a-duvet, tea-and-toast sport. Sport appreciation. Along with most of the British population I'm a world-beating, all-the-medals spectator. The Olympics and Paralympics proved our nation's worth in this, of course: that amazing atmosphere didn't make its way into the stadium without years of spectator practice, slumped with a tinny in front of Match of the Day, listening to the Test match while making a complicated Sunday sandwich, hitting the router really hard to speed up the internet connection for Wimbledon.
Anyway, speaking as a sports appreciator of long experience, I must say that radio is my preferred medium. Radio paints pictures in your head so wonderfully that often when you rush to the TV for the replay, the action isn't quite as good as you thought. Take Monday night's outrageous Andy Murray/Robot Djokovic epic. I watched the first, agonising set on TV, utterly irritated by the wandering crowd, wind-whipped microphones and blithering ball boys. So I went to bed, switched on 5 Live and enjoyed the match, Jonathan Overend chuntering me through until 2am. "It's scarcely believable that we've reached this point… Forehand return from Djokovic… It's out!" I awoke five hours later, wondering if it was all a dream.
On Wednesday, we heard about the terrible things that can happen to sport-lovers. Radio 5 live devoted the whole day to the Hillsborough panel's findings and it was a sad, sad listen. Shelagh Fogarty was a presenter on Radio Merseyside when it happened, and she said that by the evening, just hours after the tragedy, Liverpool fans were contacting the station to tell their stories, express their horror at what they'd seen. It's taken 23 years for those stories to be believed.
The unfolding, the unpicking, the remembering: it was impossible to switch off. We heard the passionate voices of the bereaved, the measured tones of the investigating panel, the righteous anger of a lawyer for the families: "This was forecast from 1981 onwards! It's not just the police. Sheffield Wednesday… Sheffield council…" A campaigning father, his voice breaking a little: "One of the good things that will come out of today is… we can get on with our grieving a bit better." After the grieving must come the prosecutions. Ninety-six dead. Forty-one that might have been saved. Just spectators, wanting to watch some sport.
Thursday was more upbeat, with another of Mark Hodkinson's lovely Radio 4 documentaries, this one on Walter Kershaw, billed by Hodkinson as Britain's first graffiti artist. In the 1970s and 80s Kershaw, from Rochdale (like Hodkinson), painted bright, detailed murals on grotty gable ends, on redundant factory walls. He splashed an enormous Alvin Stardust all over a disused shop. Kershaw's not unknown – Lord Melv presented a doc on him years ago – but he isn't exactly feted. Hodkinson got a wonderful interview out of him and those around him: "I never felt we could just sit in a room comfortably," said his ex-wife. "He doesn't want you involved in his life." Recommended.
More interviews? David Frost's Radio 2 series continued with Michael Caine, who used the word "discotheque" within his first answer. He is ace. When a rather slurry Frost asked him about being treated badly as a child when he was evacuated to Norfolk, Caine remarked that it wasn't too bad: "I was only beaten up and locked in cupboards." A lovely listen, marred by a quite ridiculous choice of gallumphing olde Hollywoode music.
